Redux

REDUX

Bryan W. Alaspa

Copyright 2020 Bryan W. Alaspa

For you, dear Reader.

Lorilee Bolling arrived at home a little after nine o’clock. It had been an interminable day, but she had a lot more to go before she could rest. Get inside, she thought, as she pulled into the driveway of her modest home. Two bedrooms, a bathroom, basement, attic, kitchen, living room and back room behind the kitchen. It was all she needed. It didn’t matter; she was gone after tonight.

She had to be.

Get inside, she thought. Get inside, get your stuff from the closet, get in the car. You can mail the card from the road. Then you have to get out of the country and start over. She had the passports. She had the new identity ready. She just had to get out. Thailand was the first place. Then, if she felt safe, maybe in South Africa.

The car was fully gassed. She had a limited time. She had to go.

Lorilee got out of the car, got her keys and ran for the door. She felt totally exposed, and it took her a moment to get the key into the door. She was out of breath when she got inside.

Her house was too dark. The same house she had been in for a thousand days, perhaps, seemed menacing tonight in the darkness. She flicked on the lights as she dashed to her bedroom. She stopped in the second bedroom (which was her office) and packed up the laptop in the bag. Did she put the card in here? No, it was too small. There was a chance it might get lost. Worry about it on the road.

Lorilee ran into the bedroom, opened the closet, and pulled out the two fully-packed suitcase. She next stepped into the bathroom, gathered up a few more things, managed to stuff them into one of the suitcases with a struggle, zipped it closed.

She had just managed it when the pounding on the door disrupted the night.

Fear clutched at her. It was happening much sooner than she thought it would.

“Lori!” The voice boomed from the front door. Just that one word sounded slurred or drugged. “Lori, get down here! We need to talk. We need to talk. Goddammit, we need to talk.”

She knew the voice, or thought she did. This was not what she thought they would do. She expected guys in black, battering down the door. There would be a soft noise and the bullet would punch through her head. She’d be gone in an instant, her body cut up or burned, never to be found.

Lori fished into her pocket and came up with the card. It was tiny, no bigger than her pinky nail. She put it in her mouth. It was the only thing she could think of. She dashed to the bathroom and took a long drink. Down it went. It would be safe there. She’d be dead soon, but the card would be there. They’d find it.

“Who is it?” She called out.

“You know who this is. It’s Bo.”

Bo? Who the fuck was Bo? Lorilee knew this was the thing they sent to kill her, but why was it a guy named Bo pretending to know who she was?

“I don’t know any Bo.”

There was a loud crash against the door. Jesus, had he just tried to break the damn thing down?

What did she do? It was just the one guy, right?

Lorilee entered the spare bedroom again. She had a letter opener on the desk, shaped like a dagger. She grabbed this and went downstairs, studying the shape on the other side of the door, through the curtained windows. He smashed the door again and the door shook in the frame. A splinter of wood broke from the door to skitter across the floor.

Lorilee reached the door and touched the doorknob. What the hell was she doing? Run, she thought. She needed to run.

Instead, she opened the door, letter opener at the ready.

Bo was a sizable man with a beard and sinewy arms. In both hands he held a sledgehammer. His clothes were wrinkled and tattered. His eyes were wild, and he looked like a man completely out of his mind.

“Lori, please!” He put the hammer down at his side, his eyes pleading. “Why are you doing this? Talk to me. Talk to me, please. We were so special.”

“I - I don’t know you.” Lorilee held the dagger out front. “Get away from here or I’ll call the police.”

“You do know me. We were a couple, Lori. It started way back at St. Augustine’s remember? Back in junior high? We were a couple for the first time then. We said we’d be together. Always.”

A penny dropped in her head. Bo. Bo Needham had been a shy kid in her class way back at St. Auggie’s. She had spoken to him maybe four times the entire two years they were in junior high and then went to different high schools. They had never been a couple.

Then the second penny dropped.

Lorilee’s eyes widened.

“Bo,” she said quietly and calmly. “Bo, listen to me. They’ve done something to you. They’ve messed with your memories, okay? Please, you have to listen to me. We were in the same class, but we were never together. You have to believe me.”

Bo looked confused. He shook his head and lifted one shaking hand to his head, running it through his sweaty hair. He shook it again.

“No, that’s not right. Not right. We were boyfriend and girlfriend. You said it would be forever. I’ve been trying to reach out, Lori. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to find you.”

Probably not, she thought. They had most likely told him right where she was. How long had they been subjecting him to the treatment?

“Bo, what you’re remembering is wrong. We went to school together, but we weren’t in love. We weren’t even friends.”

Wrong move. Bo bared his teeth.

“That’s a lie!”

Lorilee raised the dagger and held up the other hand. “Bo, you need to back off. I am going to call the police. You need to back away.”

Instead of backing away, Bo paced back and forth, his face twisted in some kind of internal agony. He chewed at his lower lip and then smacked one hand against his head.

“It’s all up here,” he said. “It wasn’t a lie. It’s not a lie. We were together. I remember it. Why can’t you remember it? You were the biggest crush in my life, Lori. Why don’t you remember?”

“They’ve done something to your mind, Bo.” She hoped he didn’t notice she hadn’t called the cops. If she closed the door, he was going to smash it down. Would she have time to get to her car, start it and drive off?

“You’re the one doing something to my mind!” His face was now a mask of anger. His eyes blazed. “You’re lying to me and I want you to stop. Stop tormenting me. Stop it!”

Lorilee was going to try one more time to talk him down, then slam the door, but he never gave her the chance. Just as she opened her mouth, he reared back with the hammer and came at her with a scream. She ducked under the swing and jabbed with the dagger. To her surprise, the pointed blade pierced his stomach, mid-section, and he staggered, the breath knocked out of him. However, as he staggered, the hammer came down and clipped Lorilee’s right shoulder.

There was a crunch she felt more than heard. Pain like a firework flared to her right, and she stumbled in that direction. Flares of bright white exploded in her eyes. She bumped into the sofa and stopped herself from stumbling.

Where was she? What was happening?

Bo staggered all the way back to the door. He looked down at his stomach, staring at the handle of the letter opener protruding there. He looked as if he was also unsure where he was.

“You stabbed me.” He reached down and pulled the dagger out. Blood flowed like a river over his hands, then his legs. Lorilee watched it spatter against the floor. “Why did you stab me?”

Lorilee stood up, but the pain in her right shoulder was so intense, she nearly fell. She had no weapon now. She had to run. Lorilee turned and ran as best she could, which was pretty poorly. She heard Bo behind her.

“Stop!” He screamed.

She made it as far as the kitchen counter. The butcher’s block of knives was there, with the huge butcher knife inside. She reached out one hand as the sledgehammer came down between her shoulder blades. This time she heard the crunch from deep within her back. Everything crumbled and she could no longer stand. Lorilee fell face first on the kitchen floor.

Nothing worked. Her legs spasmed, but would not respond to her commands. Her arms moved, but in an uncoordinated way, as if all the signals from her brain were disrupted halfway to her limbs. The pain was beyond anything she could imagine. This was it. Some part of her was aware this was the end. She hoped they would find the disk she had swallowed. Lorilee became vaguely aware Bo was approaching.

Damn. Damn.

Bo raised the sledgehammer and this time it came down on her head. She had a moment where she heard her own skull crack, then it was all black.

***

He’s standing in the old barn with his brother. They’re not supposed to be in the old building, because it’s falling apart, but such things are irresistible to young boys. The day is hot and humid. Bees buzz in a nest in one far corner.

“You can jump from this part right into that old pile of hay,” his brother says. “It’ll stop your fall, no problem.”

He’s not convinced, and he says so.

“You’re just a chicken. Watch.”

***

Detective Daniel Hernan pulled up to the curb, the lights from the police cars blinding him as he did so. There were two ambulances and six police cars. Add to the scene about twenty nosy neighbors, and Dan knew this was a shitty case. When he stepped out of the car and saw the guy slumped on the front stoop, he knew for sure this was a shit assignment.

A female patrolman walked over, her eyes tired and wishing they were anywhere else. Dan knew Darcie well and often met up with her for coffee before their shifts.

“This is a fucking mess,” she confirmed. “One dead inside and it’s a messy one. The worst I’ve seen yet. Then we think we’ve got the guy who did it dead on the porch.”

“Jesus. Can we get these neighbors back? They’re a little too close for my tastes. Any of them hear or see anything.”

“I’ll do what I can. A few of the neighbors thought they heard yelling last night, but apparently that’s not uncommon here.”

Daniel nodded. “Great. CSI already here?”

“They’re inside. Get the booties on.”

Daniel smiled and walked to one of the techies who knelt in front of the man collapsed on the porch. He tapped him on the shoulder and asked for gloves and booties. Daniel put on both, then asked the tech about the man on the porch.

“Definitely a stab wound here.” The young man pointed to a spot on the dead man’s abdomen. “Looks like it got him pretty good, but not before he got a last swing on the victim inside. Bled out here. Apparently just sat down and slumped over here.”

Daniel studied the man’s face. He was calm now, his face slack. His eyes were half-lidded, but he looked asleep. His skin was pale and his pants, the cement of the porch beneath him, and the grass were all shaded an inky color. Blood spattered his face, chest, shoulder and neck.

“How bad is it inside?” Daniel asked.

The tech turned his head to look at him. He just shook his head. “Bad.”

Daniel did his best to steel himself and walked into the house. There were cops and technicians all over, but also stepping around carefully. It appeared as if someone had run into the house with a paint brush full of red paint, flinging it around randomly. Blood spattered the kitchen cabinets, the walls, the backsplash, the sofa, the floor. Daniel saw another cop he knew well and signaled to him.

“Hey, Tim, what have we got?”

“Best we can tell is the guy showed up here ranting and raving. He used this sledgehammer on her. Hit her four times. Once got her on the shoulder, then right between the shoulder blades. Then he did her twice to the head. Not much left of her skull or features. House is in the name of a Lorilee Bolling. She had an ID in her purse, which was nearby to confirm it. We’ll get DNA and dental, too.”

Daniel thanked him and decided he could put it off no longer. Stepping so as not to get blood on his feet, he walked around the kitchen island. She was sprawled on the floor, in front of the counter, right by the fridge. At first, he only recognized the legs, body and shoulders. Whatever was left on top of the shoulders was not recognizable as a head.

Daniel studied the mass of blood, brains, and skull fragments. A few inches from the head was an eyeball. One of the final blows had scattered teeth across the floor, along with a sizable chunk of jawbone.

“Christ,” he said and held a hand to his mouth.

Daniel had seen a lot since he became a cop. There was the time he and two other officers came upon a teenager who had blown off most of his head with a double-barreled shotgun. Then there was the time they had to help clean up a car accident which had turned most of those inside into jelly. Or the time when they had another car accident where one of the children in the car had been decapitated.

Somehow this was worse. The setting and situation made this one more horrific. Smashed to pieces with a sledgehammer in her kitchen. This was the simple sentence which summed up the entire scene, and it was like something out of a suburban nightmare.

Daniel turned away. He’d read the reports about the scene and have to come back to study for clues, but right now he was relying on the cops who had already been here searching and the crime scene investigators.

Daniel studied the living room instead. Standard stuff. However, he noticed it was also spotless. It was the living room of a person rarely at home, it seemed. Busy woman, perhaps. Someone dedicated to her job.

Daniel walked around the house. No litter box or cat food. No dogs. Not pets. Again, signs pointing to a woman more in love with a job than anything here. No attachments.

Upstairs he noticed the bathroom was missing any toiletries. No hairspray. Not even a toothbrush. In the bedroom he understood why. Packed suitcases. Many of them. The closets were nearly empty.

This was a woman leaving her house with no intention of returning. A quick check of her bags revealed a passport and tickets out of the country. Thailand.

Of course, there were people who went there for vacations all the time. Not entirely weird, but given how nice and neat the house was... A woman as dedicated to her job like this was not the type to take a long vacation to Thailand. Not an easy place to work remotely or anything like that.

Fleeing?

What did this scene say to him?

Neighbors heard shouting. A guy was here with a sledgehammer. A man was doing the shouting. Lorilee was in the middle of packing up and leaving. She had a job she loved, but was still heading out of the country to a place that wasn’t weird in an overall sense, but odd given her circumstances. She stabbed him somehow, but not fatal enough for him to die before he came back at her with the hammer. She must have been hit once in the shoulder, but then in the back. She was trying to run away, but couldn’t. The blow to the back might have paralyzed her, knocked her to the ground for sure. Then he stood over her and delivered two more to the head. With that finished, he dropped the hammer, staggered to the porch and...

Sat down? Just sat down and bled to death?

Initial view, this was exactly what the initial evidence seemed to indicate.

“What do you think?”

Daniel turned around to see his fellow detective, Jessica Stamm. She was a redhead with a reputation for being sharp and no-nonsense. Daniel relayed everything he thought and what he had deciphered so far. She nodded.

“I think she was running away, too,” she confirmed. “From what I gather, the neighbors who heard anything thought the guy was raving about being in love with her.”

“A lover’s spat?” Daniel shook his head. “No. Doesn’t feel right.”

“I agree. I think he was a stalker type. Obsessed with her.”

“We’re going to need to search his phone and computer. Let’s check out everything about him.”

“Already on it, Dan.”

“I had no doubt, Jess.”

They smiled. She might have intimidated some other guys on the force, but Daniel had always enjoyed working with Jessica. They had an easy banter, and he liked her straight-to-the-point approach. He had little patience for bullshit.

“I guess I had better get in the game here and start talking to neighbors,” Daniel said.

***

“I’m going to tell mom if you do,” he says.

His brother punches him in the shoulder. “Say that again and I’ll hit you even harder. Look at the rope. It’s fine. Just swing out and let go. It’s easy.”

“I don’t think we should do it and I don’t think you should, either. It looks dangerous.

“We’re not even up that high, you baby!”

“Yeah, huh! We gotta be a hundred feet off the ground up here. You’ll break your legs, or something.”

“You just watch.”

***

“I heard some guy yelling, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. We get people yelling around here sometimes. Kids, you know.”

“I thought I heard the guy screaming about how he was in love with her. I dunno. I never really talked to her before. She was never home.”

“I heard a lot of banging. I guess he was banging on the door or something. I didn’t want to get involved.”

“I didn’t even know anyone lived in the place. I never saw a woman there at all. I guess she was working or something.”

“Nah, I slept the whole time. I heard nothing.”

“He sounded like a psycho. Screaming like that. I thought I heard him yelling about being in love or something. I don’t know. People are crazy.”

Daniel spent quite a bit of time talking to the neighbors. He didn’t end up with much. Lots of people heard things, but no one was sure what or who the woman was. Apparently Lorilee Bolling did not spend much time socializing with the neighbors.

Workaholic. Got it, he thought. Did that lead him to anything which might seal up this case?

Later, as the sun really began to rise in the sky and the heat started, Daniel met up with Jessica back at the station. The team was cleaning up the scene as best they could. More teams would go over the house. The bodies would be autopsied with toxicology reports.

Jessica sat down and ran her hands through her hair, which she had let down before entering the room. “The neighbors were not very helpful, were they?” She asked.

“Not at all. They heard something. They heard nothing. No one seemed to have talked to her before any of this.”

“What does that say to you?”

“Lorilee was a woman dedicated to her work. I guess we can check to see if she had a significant other somewhere else, but did you look at the house? The living room looked more like a museum piece than anyplace someone lived in.”

Jessica nodded. “I agree. No one knew anything about her social life. I ran into a few neighbors who thought the house was empty.”

“We need to dig into this guy’s background. Did they get a name?”

“Bo Needham. We’re running the background checks on him now. Should be ready soon.”

“Think we’ve got a guy who just snapped?” Daniel asked. “Thought there was something between them, but there wasn’t?”

“No clue. Maybe. From what he was shouting, he certainly seemed convinced they were a couple.”

“Given what we know about her schedule, when would she have time for dating?”

Jessica wagged a finger at him. “Ah-ah, you’re jumping to conclusions. We need to check her background, too. Was she working all the time? We don’t know they weren’t an item at some point.”

“I got some information about her from one of the patrolmen. She worked for GenTech.”

Jessica’s eyes widened. “GenTech? You’re kidding. The guys who make Redux?”

“The one and only. No idea what she did, but she was an employee.”

Jessica whistled. “I bet she got paid well. Can you believe the amount that company makes with that crazy headset thing? Billions.”

“It helps when it’s so expensive only the filthy rich can afford it. Plus, I hear rumors it’s addictive.”

Jessica laughed. “Let’s see, a tool you can use to download your memories then relive one of your favorites with full interaction. Did you miss the big catch in the football game? Relive it with Redux and catch the goddamn thing. How could that possibly be addictive?”

They shared another laugh. Of course, the company denied there was any addictive property, but there had been photos leaked of the richest of the rich zoned out in their homes having Redux parties. A dozen of the wealthiest sons of bitches in the world, headsets and goggles on, mouths open, lost in their memories. Trying to change those memories so they could actually have the courage to ask out the homecoming queen this time around. Rumor was some began to lose the line between memories fed to their brain from a computer and the real life stuff that actually happened.

“You don’t think this Bo guy could have afforded Redux?” Daniel asked, his eyebrow raised.

“You thinking Redux psychosis? I can’t see how. Unless he got one of those second-hand jobs, but they leave telltale bruises on the head. However, it’s worth looking into. I hear those knock-offs can really be dangerous.”

“I guess we’re going to have to make a trip down to Redux offices.” Daniel smiled. “I think we should do that together.”

“Always wanted to go.” Jessica winked. “I hear they have flavored water in the drinking fountains. Massage chairs. All kinds of stuff.”

“Hot and cold running beer out of the taps. Who knows? But I kinda want to see it for myself.”

“Let’s set up the appointment. I’m going to start making calls here. I’ll let you know when I’m headed out for interviews. You want to take Bo and I take Lori?”

“Works for me,” Daniel agreed.

Time to get to work.

***

Daniel and Jessica looked at the reports spread out across the table with tired eyes. They had taken over a conference room declaring it was their room for the investigation. They puzzled over the reports from the patrol officers and other detectives. A narrative had been born and was already being pushed as the correct one.

Both Needham was mentally ill and probably off his meds. There were pills bottles in his apartment which were not as empty as they should have been. His roommate claimed he could tell Bo was spiraling, but couldn’t stop him. The man also claimed Bo had started ranting about a girl he had dated in junior high. A girl he called Lori whom he had apparently dated back then. Hot and heavy. Bo was sure she was reaching out to him and wanted to be with him.

“So he snaps and shows up at her place with a sledgehammer?” Jessica rubbed her eyes and tossed the report down on the table.

“That’s the narrative everyone wants us to believe.” Daniel yawned and stretched. “Boss man told me today he hoped we could wrap this up in a few days.”

“It all feels...wrong.”

Daniel sighed and got up to pace around. “Agreed. I still think something happened at GenTech.”

“Even though we have no evidence.”

“I have my gut.”

“Which does nothing to make an arrest.”

Daniel turned his head to stare at her. “We need to get into GenTech and rattle some branches.”

***

Three days later the two detectives stood in the marble-floored lobby of GenTech, home of Redux. The building was the tallest in the city, with an odd, twisting shape that gave it the nickname The Unicorn Horn or just The Horn. It shone in the sunlight, making its top spire visible for up to one hundred miles on cloudless days. It was all glass, with nary an unpleasant view from any office in the place.

“Hello, Detectives,” said a small man with neat inky hair and thick black glasses. “My name is Eric Newmann. I’m the Communications Director.”

“We were here to see Del Lorde,” Daniel said. “We were told we’d be able to talk to him.”

“Well, Mr. Lorde is a very busy man. He had other tasks to attend to. Plus, Ms. Bolling worked in my department. He thought it would be better I answer any of your questions about her.”

Daniel and Jessica exchanged looks. Already the corporate runaround and they had barely set foot in the place. Daniel shrugged. This guy would have to do, and if they needed Lorde, they’d try to get a judge to compel the man to talk.

“Fine,” Jessica said. “Is there a place we can talk? We’d also like to see her desk.”

“We can head upstairs. There’s a conference room and we’ve left her cubicle as it was.”

Eric led the way, and the detectives followed. At least it was nice and cool in the Horn.

In the prior three days, both detectives had started to assemble pieces of the puzzle, but they were still waiting on autopsy and toxicology reports.

Lorilee Bolling had worked at GenTech in the Marketing & Communications department for seven years. By all accounts, she had been a dedicated employee, often working late, traveling for work quite a bit, and rising up the corporate ladder. There was nothing in her past indicating anything untoward. She had a few parking tickets, all of them paid. Thus was the end of the nefarious activities of one Lorilee Bolling.

She had no pets. Lori had the house in the suburbs but often slept at hotels downtown to be at work early the next day. She had no boyfriend that any of her friends or family knew about. No one knew why Bo Needham would feel they were a couple.

As for Bo, it turned out he went to the same junior high with Lori. They had been in the same classes, but his family said he had never had a serious girlfriend, and definitely not with Lori or anyone else in junior high. Bo had mental problems. He suffered from depression as soon as puberty hit and was treated for bi-polar disorders. When he was on his meds, he could hold down jobs, but most of them were labor-intensive gigs working at warehouses or construction sites. The problem was he often went off his meds, so holding down a job for anything longer than a year was hard.

Poor Bo, like so many others with mental illness, soon descended into drug use and a constant string of going into and out of therapy. His sister assumed he was on his meds now and had been happy, but she had also lost track of him a few weeks ago. Maybe a month. Had he ever had a Redux session? She laughed. There was no way her brother, on his own, could afford even a street-level session.

Frustrating. There seemed to be no reason for Bo to be at Lorilee’s door the night he showed up and killed her. He was unstable, but had never been dangerous before. Perhaps to himself, but not others.

Jessica, Daniel and Eric reached their floor. The scenery out the window was spectacular. Daniel always had a thing for tall buildings, and it was hard to focus on the task at hand when you could see all across downtown into the suburbs. They took a seat in a compact conference room and Dan sat with his back to the window. Jessica sat to his left and Newmann sat at the far end of the table, as if sitting so far away would be easier when it came time for him to dash.

“Can you tell us what Lorilee was working on?” Jessica started, still getting a notepad and pen out.

“She was working on marketing Redux,” Eric replied. “I mean, she worked in the key accounts department, so with some bigger companies around the world. They offer Redux sessions and tools for their top execs. It’s thought dealing with past memories positively can help people be better managers.”

Daniel furrowed his brow. “How so?”

Eric extended his hands to the side like the wings of a frightened dove. “Well, there can be things which hold a person back when they’re trying to succeed. Past failures, which can be triggered with increased accountability and responsibility. Redux helps them get over that. There’s been a lot of demonstrated therapeutic work done with Redux.”

“Interesting. You’d think something so valuable would be made cheaper so the rest of the world could use it,” Daniel remarked.

Eric’s face turned an interesting shade of pink. “We’re working hard to bring down the costs of our interface equipment. However, to do what we do takes a tremendous amount of technology and that tech does not come cheap. We are working to make our product more accessible for therapy purposes, however. Maybe have it be something covered by insurance.”

Daniel held up his hand as if warding off an onslaught. “Apologies, Mr. Newman. I can’t help being a smart-ass sometimes. Did she have access to new technologies or sensitive documents?”

Eric looked puzzled. “I am not aware of anything. I mean, she might have seen or heard a few things about upgrades or new versions of the Redux headset, but nothing big. We all sign NDAs here so she wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone about it without repercussions.”

“Like ending up dead?” Jessica inserted that barb and raised one eyebrow.

Eric stammered. “I’m sorry, but I must be misunderstanding something. I thought it was proven Lorilee was killed by some psycho stalker. Someone she had a relationship with in the past. Are trying to imply she was killed by...what? By the company?”

He let out several high pitched breaths, which Daniel realized was him laughing. Sweat beaded across the man’s forehead.

“We don’t know what the reason was at this point. There’s a lot we’re investigating and nothing is off the table.” Daniel said this with an even tone and a straight face. He was actually enjoying making this man sweat.

“Well, I can assure you this company had nothing to do with it. From what I can tell, and from my own personal experience, Lorilee was loved by her co-workers. I know I thought of her as totally reliable. She was always willing to put in extra hours and work hard. We will miss her.”

“What sort of relationships did she have with her co-workers?” Daniel asked. “Were there office romances? Did she have a best friend? A group she hung out with?”

Eric shrugged, then wiped at his forehead. “I don’t know. I don’t hang out with the people who report to me, to be honest. I saw her with some of the women on the floor. We have a strict policy of no romances here at the office and had never been made aware of anything with her.”

“You mentioned how GenTech is researching using Redux for therapy purposes.” Jessica chewed on the end of her pen. “Have you already been doing testing of that sort of thing in hospitals or with psychiatrists?”

Eric cleared his throat and adjusted his tie. “I wouldn’t know. That would be research and development.”

“I see,” Daniel replied, making a note. “Can we talk to them?”

“I’ll have to check with legal. There’s a lot in there we don’t want people to see just yet.”

Jessica looked at Daniel and mouthed, “I bet.”

“Were you aware of anyone here at the company who might have had a grudge against Lorilee?” Daniel asked.

Eric cleared his throat again. “Not that I am aware of, no. Again, I don’t see how anyone here would have had anything to do with this man who killed her.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Jessica sighed and closed her notebook. This was not getting results. “You don’t have to see the connections, we do. Are you aware of the street version of Redux? Copies? Do you know how dangerous they are or is that not really a thing?”

Eric once again looked flustered. “Those are cheap knock-offs. Redux is a top class product which should be used under very specific situations. Our product is government regulated, you know. Those street versions could cause physical or mental damage. Things which are not a problem for our product.”

“What about Redux psychosis?” Daniel asked.

“There is no evidence of any such thing and our company is working hard with government regulators to ensure our product is safe. Redux is just a way to revisit memories, but with an interactive component. It’s like Virtual Reality games of decades past, but with a more personalized approach. It’s harmless.”

Daniel and Jessica looked at each other. Was there any point in going on with this? This guy was a company mouthpiece and they would not get anything but the standard company line out of him. She gave a very subtle shake of her head.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Newmann,” Daniel said, closing up his notebook. “We’d really like to take a look at Lorilee’s desk.”

Newmann looked relieved. He stood up, shook their hands, then gestured toward the door. Two minutes later, both of them were in Lorilee’s cubicle.

It was the cubicle of someone dedicated to their jobs. There were folders, papers, and pictures all over. Photos of babies neither detective knew, and family members they had not yet spoken to. There were some vacation images, but not many. There were more charts, calendars, and other things related to work all over. A plastic plant stood in a plastic pot on top of the cubicle wall. A desk lamp covered in Post-It notes took up one side of the desk.

“It would take our CSI team three days to look through this,” Jessica stated. “What are we looking for?”

“Let’s see if she had a date book or one of those planners.” Daniel was already shuffling through papers. “It’s going to take a warrant to get voicemails or things off of her computer.”

“Provided they haven’t already deleted everything.”

Daniel had no response to that. He found what appeared to be a planner, stuffed with more tabs and Post-Its peeking out of the pages. There was also a desktop calendar which Jessica freed from the pens, staplers, and other papers. As they tucked them away in their bags, one of the other employees approached.

She was a small woman with glasses, her hair done in a bun, complete with a pencil stuck through it. She looked nervous.

“Are you guys cops?” she asked.

Jessica glanced at Daniel, but turned on her warmest smile. “We’re detectives, yes. We’re just looking for some things which might give us insight into what happened to Lorilee. You are?”

“Um, well, my name is Laura,” she said. “Laura Jenson. I worked with Lori quite a bit. I guess we could be called friends. We ate lunch together a lot.”

“I see,” Daniel replied. “Do you know if Lori was romantically involved with anyone?”

Laura looked even more nervous. Her eyes darted around. “Well, not really. I heard she had a few affairs with guys here in the office. However, I don’t think she was seeing anyone when she...when she...”

Unable to complete the sentence, Laura shrugged and wiped at her eyes.

“Do you know what she was working on?” Jessica asked. “Anything new? Had she been working on any new projects lately?”

“Not that I know if. We were both working on marketing campaigns for the new iteration of Redux. A whole social media campaign, combined with print and some webinars. We were both reaching out to influencers to promote it.”

“Did she talk to you about what she was working on or tell you everything?” Daniel asked.

Laura shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, she didn’t have much of a social life. She worked late and got here early. She even had an apartment she rented down here and spent most nights there.”

“Was there anything going on her life she was worried about?” Jessica asked. “Anything which might have indicated she was in trouble? Leave nothing out, either. Even if it just seems weird or crazy.”

Laura shrugged again, her hands wringing against each other. “Well, she told me she had gotten a few phone calls recently. Weird ones where the people on the other side hung up instead of spoke. Occasionally the other person would breathe heavy into the phone, but not saying anything.”

“Good to know.” Daniel made a mental note for phone records. They would need them from the office, too. Emails, as well.

“I’m very sorry about what happened to your friend,” Jessica said as she put a hand on Laura’s arm. “We’re going to do what we can to find out why this happened.”

“Thank you,” Laura replied, but then she wiped at her eyes. She looked around once more and dashed back to her own cubicle.

Daniel and Jessica carried their newly gotten gains and headed for the door. They could feel the eyes of everyone else staring at them. Just as they reached the door which would lead to the elevators, a voice cut through the silence. Loud, gregarious and familiar even with just the few words spoken.

“Detectives, I am so sorry to be so late.”

Daniel and Jessica once again glanced at each other. Jessica mouthed “Oh, shit” as they both rotated on their heels toward the sound of the voice.

Del Lorde strode across the office, looking as handsome as always. The world considered the man a genius at both technology and business. He wore a smart blue suit, his hair done perfectly, with the part down the left side. He had perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth which beamed at them right now. Halfway to where the two detectives stood, he already had his hand out. He shook Daniel’s hand first, then Jessica’s.

“It is a pleasure to meet you. I wish it was under better circumstances. I apologize for not being here on time, but I had a meeting I just could not remove myself from. That’s the problem with being an international company, you sometimes end up on calls overseas in different time zones. Would you like to speak now? Do you have time?”

Daniel smiled back. “I think we can make time. It’s not often we get the chance to talk to one of the most eligible bachelors in the city.”

Del laughed. “Oh, you can take none of that stuff seriously. Detectives, it would be my pleasure to speak about this. I might shed some light on whatever it was Ms. Bolling was working on and help answer some questions about GenTech.”

Del led to the way to a private elevator at the far end of the hallway. He waved his hand in front of a glass panel. The door opened, and he held it for the detectives. They rose to the top of the spire in silence. The entire trip took seconds.

The door opened on a vast office, taking up the entire floor. At one end, against a bank of windows, was an enormous desk. Monitors ringed the entire front end of the desk and there were more on the walls. Each of them was tuned to a newscast, or a stock market ticker. There was a gigantic leather sofa about three feet in front of the desk. With a gesture, Del indicated where the detectives were to sit and they sat down.

Del strolled effortlessly around the back of the desk and, with a smile on his face, he sat down in the large leather chair. He sat back, adjusting his suit coat.

“Now, let me start out by saying that I am appalled at what happened to Ms. Bolling. It’s a tragedy for her and her family. I have reached out to her parents and extended my sympathies already. I cannot imagine the horror of this situation. It’s almost unbearable. GenTech mourns with them.”

Jessica and Daniel let him ramble. They held their own smiles on their faces as he spoke, waiting patiently for him to stop.

“Thank you for that, but we are not the press.” Daniel calmly removed his notepad again, opened it and leveled his gaze. “Now, can you tell us what Ms. Bolling was working on? No one seems to have any details?”

Del shrugged. “She worked in marketing. She was helping market the Redux tools and platform. You know, we are one of the hottest selling technological devices on the marketing, right? We’ve sold hundreds of thousands of the units and our newest iteration is already pre-selling like never before.”

Jessica kept her smile as if she had painted it on. “Great, but we’re not asking about that. Did she have access to things which could have been controversial? Or would she have seen anything she shouldn’t?”

Del’s smile faltered. “Why would she have access to anything like that? No, she might have seen some of the new product specs ahead of the average person, but she was not in research and development.”

“Do you know if she had enemies here at GenTech?” Daniel asked.

Del shrugged. “Not that I was ever made aware of.”

“Did you have any sort of personal relationship with Ms. Bolling?” Jessica asked.

Del cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “Well, I was her boss, I guess. I mean, I’m the CEO, so everyone in this building is a potential direct report for me. I spoke to her at a few company functions. I remember talking to her during a Christmas party one year. I’m a bit confused. I thought it had been determined this was a crazy person who did this to her? Someone she had a relationship with in the past?”

“We aren’t sure how true that is,” Daniel assured him. “We’re checking every angle.”

“Well, I heard the man who did this was found dead at the scene. He certainly was not a GenTech employee. So, you’ll forgive me if I’m a bit puzzled as to what this has to do with GenTech or Redux.”

“Can you tell us more about how Redux works?” Jessica asked.

Del smiled again, now back in familiar territory. “You haven’t tried it?”

“We live on a cop’s salary, Mr. Lorde. Redux is out of our price range.”

Del laughed. “I should send you each a unit. You’ll love it.”

Jessica held up a hand. “No need for that. But can you give us a bird’s-eye-level explanation?”

“I am sure you’re familiar with Virtual Reality,” he began. “This is a higher form of that. While VR created an entirely digital environment, Redux is a tremendous step forward. We can download memories to a computer. A person thinks about a particularly powerful memory during the process. For the full experience, a trained technician should guide them through this, but the individual unit can also do this on its own and our newer models will allow people to undergo the process at home.”

He paused to let this all sink in. This was all very rehearsed, Daniel thought to himself. He gave a slight twitch of his little finger towards Jessica. She responded with a finger twitch of her own.

“Once it’s downloaded, you can then use the goggles and ear piece to live through that memory. Just like VR, it’s totally interactive. So, if you picked a memory you always wish you could have changed, you can now do something differently. You can see what would happen if you had asked that cheerleader to Homecoming or made the touchdown pass.”

“But it doesn’t actually change anything in real life,” Daniel added.

Del laughed. “I wish the tech were that powerful. No, we still haven’t yet invented something which can alter reality or change history. This is just a trip through memory lane with the chance to try something else. Most people find just doing that is very liberating and exciting.”

Daniel nodded, thinking, chewing his pen. “Can someone else outside of the person experiencing the memory access the...playback, if you will?”

Del looked puzzled. “You mean hack a Redux session? No. Not possible.”

“Are you sure?” Jessica added.

Del looked insulted by the mere insinuation. “We have all the highest safety protocols in place. Why would anyone want to do that?”

“Could someone implant an idea or alter a memory from outside? Perhaps convince someone of something using Redux, maybe without even the person knowing it was happening?” Daniel held his gaze, waiting for the reply to this one. Before they came into the building, Jessica and Daniel had pooled their notes and both agreed they had a hunch this had to do with Redux in some way. Nothing about the story presented as reality made any sense.

“I don’t see how it’s possible. Not with a fully authorized Redux headset.”

“What about the knock offs?” Jessica asked.

“What about them? I cannot say anything about the people who try to steal our designs. We take quick legal action as soon as we’re made aware of any counterfeit Redux hardware. GenTech does not authorize these and we think they have the potential of being dangerous.”

“Are you doing anything to get them off the streets?” Jessica followed.

Dell’s smile remained, but his voice was cold. “That’s what the police are for. We’ve funded them via our donations and if we learn of an illegal operation, we turn them in.”

“You don’t handle them on your own?” Daniel inquired.

“I don’t have my own personal army, detective. We bring lawsuits when we have to, but making counterfeit devices is illegal, so we turn them over to the police.”

Daniel nodded. He jotted in his notebook as if taking down something important. In fact, he had started a tally of every tell from Lorde that he was lying. A glance up to the left there. Blinking here. Adjusting suit coat there. Hand wringing here.

“Would it be possible for a Redux operator to steal information from someone using the device?” He asked.

“The only secrets an operator could take from a customer would be whatever the customer gave them. The user gives information and the A.I. of Redux creates the environment.”

“Could an operator...oh, how do I phrase this?” Jessica chewed on her pen for a moment. “Could someone put an idea into a user’s head?”

Del swallowed hard. Daniel made a quick tick mark. “You mean implant images? Something like that movie? What was it from all those years ago? Where a bunch of people plant an idea in someone’s dreams? This is virtual reality, detective. You could no more get someone to do something they weren’t already inclined to do than you would try to hypnotize someone into committing murder. The mind doesn’t work that way. It’s much stronger than you think.”

“What if it’s not?” Jessica asked.

“What do you mean?”

“She means, what if you were to mess around with a mentally disturbed person’s mind?” Daniel added. “Could you take someone with a history of mental illness, mess with their memories and, essentially, weaponize them?”

“I’m not sure I like the term ‘weaponize,’ but I suppose it might be technically possible to mess around with a mentally ill person using a street level Redux knock-off and create a potentially dangerous situation. Therefore, we don’t endorse the knock-offs and it’s why we put people through a thorough mental health screening before the use Redux.”

Daniel cast his eyes sideways to Jessica. She gave him a quick wink. They had a lot more questions, but could tell Lorde was starting to get on edge. It wouldn’t be much longer before he either kicked them out or insisted he couldn’t answer more questions without a lawyer present. It was time to head out.

“Thank you for talking to us, Mr. Lorde,” Jessica said, standing up and extending her hand.

Lorde did his best to hold on to his smile, but blinked in rapid succession. He stood up, adjusted his suit and shook her hand. Daniel extended his as well.

“If we have more questions, can we get in touch with you?” Daniel asked.

Lorde nodded. “You can contact my assistant. I’d be glad to help. Again, I really am sorry this happened to Ms. Bolling. This is a tragedy all the way around.”

“Yes, it is. Thank you again.”

They hustled to the elevator as quickly as they could. Once they hit the outside air, both of them let out a loud breath and laughed.

“Wow,” Jessica said.

“I know. Jesus. You’d think a guy like that would be better at lying. Did you notice all of his tells?”

Jessica imitated him as she read off her list. “Looking up to the left. The blinking and fidgeting. The thing he kept doing with his suit coat and lapels. A guy like that must get so used to people agreeing with him and doing what he says without question, he forgets how to fib.”

They made their way to the car and Daniel started the engine. Then he sat back, sighing.

“Well, what do we think?” He asked.

“I think he’s lying. The thing I’m still not sure about is if he’s lying about knowing who killed her or just hiding something she saw. I mean, what if she saw something there and someone else within the company had her killed? Would he know about the first part, or the second, or just not want anyone to know what she found out?”

“I have this feeling he knows more about what happened. I mean, the scenario we’re supposed to believe is some guy she barely knew in eighth grade forty years later decided he was in love with her and killed her. It makes no sense. What would set him off?”

“No reunions and no contact between the two we can find,” Jessica confirmed, rooting through her notes.

Just then both their phones vibrated. Daniel glanced down.

“I think we need to go visit our friend at the morgue,” Daniel said.

“He’s got results already.”

“I think the bottle of scotch I gave him helped.”

“Bribery will get you everywhere.”

They pulled out of the parking space, each of them making a mental note they would be back here more than likely. Something was happening within the glass walls of the Horn and within GenTech. They just didn’t know what.

***

Reuben Fagan was the Medical Examiner Daniel and Jessica had to deal with. He was an older man, in his fifties, and wore wire-rimmed glasses, stood all of five-foot-five, but had been in the business for so long, helped provide assistance for so many crimes, he seemed a lot bigger. He knew everything there was to know about people and what could kill them, but he was also beloved by cops for being approachable.

They also knew him to love scotch.

It was well known among the detectives that a bottle or case of expensive stuff could really help move your particular needs along.

The detectives arrived twenty minutes after leaving GenTech. They were both tired, talking little on the ride over. Jessica even dozed off a bit against the glass of her passenger door.

“We’re here,” Daniel announced, nudging her awake as he turned off the engine.

They got out and were inside moments later. Fagan met them at the door of his office, then led them to the autopsy room.

“Thank you for coming as fast as you did. How was your trip to GenTech?”

“Not bad, we got to talk to the big man himself.” Daniel sat down on one of the rolling desk chairs Fagan kept around the room.

“Wow, you got to talk to Mr. Lorde, eh? How special you must feel. You know, I sometimes wonder if he gave himself that last name. He thinks he should be a lord.”

Jessica laughed, then yawned. “So, what do you have for us?”

“Thanks to the uniqueness of this case, and the generous gift from Daniel, I decided to do both of these right away. I found some interesting things. Daniel, let’s start with your case first. Mr. Needham.”

Fagan produced a folder from his desk, then waved both of the detectives over to the table. Both of them knew Fagan had cut a giant Y-shaped cut into the man’s body and removed all of his insides. However, the Examiner had politely pulled a sheet over the body, right up to the chin, hiding the wound.

“He was definitely killed from the stab wound,” Fagan said. “I don’t think you had any doubts about that. However, there were no drugs in his system of a narcotic variety. He was apparently on several anti-psychotics, but he was not on anything else that night. The letter opener got him right in the abdomen and into his liver, but also tore up other things. He bled internally.”

Fagan looked up at both of the detectives to ensure they were paying attention.

“This is where things get interesting. Look at his head.”

Fagan put the folder down on the metal table next to the body and tilted the head so they could see. He pointed along Needham’s head, across his temple area.

“You can just make out the faint bruises left here. I think he was having Redux sessions, but probably from some street-level knock-offs. Either that, or he was somehow accessing the top quality stuff, but having so many sessions they left bruises. I did some scans of his body and looked at his brain. There’s damage to the skull and brain tissue. He had brain damage, essentially.”

“Does excessive use of Redux cause that?” Daniel asked.

“Definitely. Of course, the company spends a ton of money keeping it all hush-hush, but the number of times guys like me are finding people dead with brain damage like this is growing. God help us if those fucking Redux helmets are made cheaper or become available to more people. I hear they want to put them in hospitals to deal with mental health problems. I hope not.”

“Could the damage caused by the Redux have caused him to murder Bolling?” Jessica asked.

“Well, it might have. I mean, I’d need to know what memory he was reliving. If he was reliving his desire to date Ms. Bolling in some way, given his mental health and the shakiness of the knock-off Redux equipment, there might be some connection. At the very least, someone with the mental health issues Mr. Needham had, could have been guided or pushed into believing something, and this could have let his delusions send him to her house. As for the murder part, well, I don’t know.”

“Anything else?” Daniel asked.

“Other than that, he was relatively healthy. I mean, he’s a little underweight, but not sick. All of his problems appear to be in his head, and I extend that even into the physical stuff. The bruising and damage to his brain are pretty extensive. He was either showing signs of extensive use of the device or very long and intensive sessions.”

“Dammit,” Daniel said. “What about Ms. Bolling?”

Fagan picked up his folder and walked to the metal table next to Needham’s resting place. He flipped the folder open and studied his notes. This body was covered entirely.

“Prepare yourself,” Fagan warned.

He pulled the sheet back and the horror of what happened to Lorilee Bolling made both detectives gasp. Her skull was just shattered. There was little left resembling a human being.

“I think you can tell what killed her,” Fagan stated. “Her skull was destroyed. There was little left inside of it. She had broken bones up and down her body. The hammer destroyed her.”

Fagan lifted something out of the folder in his hands. It took Daniel a moment to realize it was a small plastic bag. It reflected the overhead light.

“I found this in her stomach. Well, to be honest, it wasn’t even all the way into her stomach yet. Stuck in the esophagus. She must have swallowed it right before Needham broke in and killed her.”

Daniel and Jessica moved closer. “What the hell is that?” Jessica asked.

“Looks like some kind of SIM card or a very tiny memory card,” he said. “It should still function. As I said, it didn’t make it to the stomach, so it’s still intact.”

Daniel peered at the small square of plastic. “Was this forced down her throat?”

Fagan shook his head. “I think she swallowed it.”

“Swallowed it?” Jessica asked. “Why? Wouldn’t it have been destroyed in her stomach?”

Daniel sighed. “Not if she knew she was about to die.”

Jessica looked horrified. “You think she did this just as Needham showed up at her house?”

Daniel nodded. “Yeah, but think about it. She had it with her and was prepared to do this. What if she knew she had something so powerful she was prepared to swallow the damn thing in case she was killed?”

Jessica gave him a half-smile. “Now that seems like a bit of a stretch.”

“I agree with him,” Fagan interjected. “Just a feeling, though. I’m supposed to be the scientist. However, she had this with her. She knew what was on it. From the reports I’ve seen from the crime scene, she appeared to be preparing to leave town. The suitcases were half-packed. She had nothing at the house like food that could spoil. She was going to run. She had plans to take this memory chip and get it to someone, perhaps, but Lorilee was heading out of town. Despite her plans, she knew something bad might happen. Lorilee swallowed this when Needham started pounding on her door.”

Jessica studied both men’s faces. “You think she knew, once Needham started on the door, this was it? You realize what you’re implying.”

Daniel rubbed his eyes. Man, he needed a nap. Or a drink. “They sent Needham to kill her for what she has on this disk.”

“That puts things back on GenTech,” Jessica concluded.

“We’d better figure out what’s on here and what it means for the company,” Daniel said. “Thanks, Fagan. You get an entire case of Scotch this time.”

“Make it the good stuff, detective. I think I earned it.”

“You bet.”

***

Hello, my name is Lorilee Bolling. When you get this, I am either out of the country or dead. I have to face the fact, and say it out loud, that there’s a good chance I won’t be alive by the time you see this. I’ve tried to make plans and account for everything, but the people I’m dealing with are very powerful and they will come after me. They will kill me.

So, where do I start?

I was working in the marketing department at GenTech. If you aren’t familiar with the company, they’re the people behind Redux. Redux is one of the most popular new pieces of technology among the wealthy. It makes this company billions of dollars, and the demand keeps growing. I was very excited to have this job, and it was a magnificent job.

However, two weeks ago, while I was looking for a file to post to social media on our shared drive, I came across a folder I had never seen before. They labeled it as Redux5, which indicated to me it might be specs for the latest model. I thought I might just sneak a peek at it. I opened the file and came across horrifying information. So horrifying, I quickly began copying it. An hour after I found it, the file was password protected and I got kicked out.

I quickly downloaded the information to a drive and brought it home. What I found out is that GenTech is involved in so many things when it comes to Redux. They’re doing experiments. A lot of them for the government, but a few of them unknown by the government. Secret stuff.

They’re experimenting with people’s lives wherever and whenever they can. They’re trying to turn Redux into a weapon, but they’re also trying to find a way to control people’s minds.

Oh, and when I say the company is doing work for the government, well, it’s not just the U.S. government.

The system is not as secure as they want you to believe. There are ways to implant ideas and change memories to affect people’s actions in the real world. There are also ways to put people into comas, or alter their memories enough they can believe something that never happened actually did.

Supposedly, GenTech is working with people who have serious mental health issues to cure them. Perhaps they are, but they’re also trying to see if they can turn mentally ill people into weapons. People who can kill on command and be directed to go after a particular person, then return to the mental ward.

They’re doing things to people right now. Oh, and the whole Redux syndrome? Yeah, it’s real. GenTech has created entire hospitals to house those affected, but it turns out being able to relive parts of your life and do things differently this time can become more addicting than any narcotic. People are addicted and turning their brains into mush.

All of this is dangerous information to have. I wasn’t supposed to see it. Someone made a mistake.

I found this about three months ago. When I looked at the data, I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t know what to do with the information. Who do I send it to?

To my surprise, Del Lorde showed up at my desk one afternoon. I thought I was in trouble, but instead he said something about how he noticed me around the office and wanted to know if we could get dinner together. I was shocked.

I should have known.

How stupid can one person be? Such a moron. So stupid.

Before I knew it, Lorde and I were meeting up all the time. I spent the night at his apartment and he’d call me into the office. One day, I got the chance to really search around his office. I found nothing, of course. Lorde wouldn’t keep details about the things GenTech is doing there, I suppose.

I even got to sit for a Redux session. He told me it was a treat. I think he downloaded a lot of my memories. Most people who have a Redux session get a little dizzy and tired afterward. After mine, I couldn’t remember anything about what they looked at. I didn’t remember being involved in any past memories. I looked at the clock and realized I had been out for almost twenty-four hours.

I realized they had duped me. Of course they had. I was so stupid. So convinced a guy like Lorde just might be interested in a woman like me. He had been just lulling me into a place where he could raid my memories.

I knew I was in trouble then. I didn’t know what he found, but I was sure it was bad. He was coming for me.

I also started getting weird phone calls. Calls with someone on the other end breathing, but not saying anything. I could hear a television in the background, but not understand what it was.

I started to plan. I created duplicates of the information contained on this drive. I planned to create a new identity and even picked a new country. I’d start in Thailand, then work from there. I was going to run for as long as I could and hope the information I sent to the press brought down Lorde and GenTech.

These people are dangerous. They have our memories. Do you understand that? Lorde and GenTech is the most powerful person and company on the planet because they have the memories of the most wealthy and famous people in the world saved away. They’ve barely begun to tap into its potential.

If I’m dead when you see this, I hope it was fast. I hope you can take what’s here and do something.

They’re killing people. It’s going to get worse. Stop them.

***

His brother doesn’t just jump up and grab the rope from where he’s standing, even though he could. His brother is three years older than he is and a lot taller. Instead, for full dramatic effect, his brother makes his way to the far end of the loft. The boards creak ominously beneath him. Dust floats in the air, caught by shafts of light leaking through the slats of wood which comprise what’s left of the barn.

“Now watch ya big baby.”

His brother starts to run. Instinctively, he knows something is not right. This shouldn’t be happening. He should stop his brother. Stand in front of him. Scream. Yell. Call mom.

He’s too scared to move.

***

Daniel leaned back in his chair, wiping his eyes, cracking his neck. The chair groaned beneath him, which he felt was pretty much how he felt, too. His head was fit to burst.

“Well?” he asked.

Jessica was still glued to her computer screen. Her eyes were wide, but held a mixture of shock and sadness. Twice he had caught her dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. He had had to step out of the office at one point himself, to stand in the hall and weep. She saw him looking at her and popped the earbuds out.

“Did you say something?”

“I just asked - well?”

“Well, what?”

Daniel stood up and cracked his back. “We’ve been at this for hours. What do we have and what can we do with it?”

Jessica sighed and leaned back in her own chair. She added a yawn to all the neck and shoulder cracking.

They had been rooting through the hundreds of digital documents and videos Lorilee Bolling had stored in the tiny disk. The woman must have worked day and night, risking everything to get the information. How she had found some of it, got access to the places she did, Daniel did not understand. Once she started, she had become determined. Surely it was this determination which had gotten her killed.

“We have enough information here to shut down GenTech,” Jessica said. “She has video of them doing experiments with Redux on people in institutions. She shows us rooms filled with people who are utterly insane, babbling to the walls or just catatonic. She shows documents indicating people have committed suicide when the insanity gets to be too much for them.”

Daniel nodded to all of this. They had printed out information, taping it up to the wall along with photos. They had not yet added the red yarn, but that was coming. He studied all the information, the duplication of documents and clips from videos.

“None of this proves our case,” Daniel said.

“What?”

“Our case. Remember our case? We’re not here to take down GenTech. Yes, there’s plenty here which could do that, but you know how guys like Lorde are. They have a way of distancing themselves from everything here. We have nothing in here which indicates he somehow triggered Needham to go kill Bolling. Right now, despite all of this, we just have the story of a man who snapped, suddenly remembered his childhood crush, and went nuts. The end result was a dead woman.”

Jessica moaned. “You’re right. We have nothing to really nail Lorde with. Enough to put a lot of people out of work here, but nothing that can lock him up in prison. I can see him right now with an army of lawyers testifying before Congress. Telling people he was taken advantage of by people he trusted. The company files for bankruptcy and hundreds of people end up out of work.”

“Exactly. What do we need? We still need to prove Needham had any contact with GenTech, Lorde or Redux. We need to know for certain he was receiving sessions and with whom. If we can then connect that to GenTech and Lorde himself, we’ve got a shot.”

“He’ll have another army of scientists saying what we’re claiming is impossible. That Redux is nothing more than a game for the rich and a tool to help people with mental issues.”

Daniel leaned his forehead against the wall. The cement wall was nice and cool.

“We’re not going to get him, are we?” he asked.

Jessica walked over and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m not giving up, Dan. We have a lot here which we can use to damage Lorde. We have leverage.”

Daniel shoots his head. “He’s too powerful. He’ll slip out of the noose.”

“He needs to know what might be coming down on him. Lorde had to have made mistakes. Would he have met with Needham himself? Think about it.”

Daniel ran a hand over his chin. So much stubble. “He seems like the type who would hire someone. Keep his distance. But he got involved with this one personally. He slept with her for crying out loud. If he was willing to do that, he’d want to handle turning Needham into a weapon himself.”

“You think Needham’s roommate would have seen Lorde?”

Daniel shook his head. “No, but maybe he drove a fancy car or sent a limo for him.”

Jessica looked at her watch. “It’s late. I don’t think we should head over there tonight.”

For the first time, Daniel looked at his watch. It was almost eleven. Where had the day gone? “We’ll head over tomorrow morning.”

Jessica gathered her stuff. Daniel studied the files and materials scattered across the conference room table. It was too much. Were they just chasing their tails?

“You have any regrets, Jessica?”

She paused at the door, a puzzled look on her face. “What are you talking about?”

Daniel waved a hand at the papers on the table. “You know a memory of something you wish you could do over again? Maybe see how it would have turned out if you did something differently?”

Jessica laughed. “Who doesn’t? A few days I’d do something different. Probably more than a few. You?”

Daniel paused, chewed at his lower lip. “Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I can see the appeal of this.”

They walked out together.

“I see the appeal, but I’m just not sure it’s right. We make our choices and we live with the consequences. That’s how it should work.”

***

Daniel arrived at home and found a large box waiting for him. It had the bright blues and yellows indicative of a GenTech box. He had seen the images on television and in magazines, but never up close. He studied the box and laughed.

“That son of a bitch.”

Lorde had sent a Redux, just like he promised. He bet Jessica was finding a similar box on her front porch across town. Daniel bent down, picked up the surprisingly light box, and carried into his apartment. He set the box down on the ottoman in the living room and then went into the kitchen to make himself some dinner. He sat down in front of the box while eating, staring at the box.

The temptation was real. He did his best to watch the news and not open the box to try out Redux. It was supposed to be done with a technician. Daniel wondered if this was the latest upgraded model, which could be operated at home. He had heard the rumors such a thing was coming.

Once Daniel finished his dinner, he put the dishes in the sink, then poured himself a very stiff drink. Lots of whiskey. A little ice. He sat down in his chair and stared at the box.

Tempting, but he knew it was a bad idea. Doing this would give GenTech his memories, and his memories were his.

Memories of his brother. Memories of that day.

Daniel downed the liquor, poured himself another. He refused to let himself get drunk, but the sharp blades of those memories were cutting him again. He had to tamp them down. He could live with the existing scars, but didn’t need to create more.

“Nope.” He downed the second drink and addressed the box. “Nope. Not tonight. Not ever.”

That declaration over, Daniel rinsed his glass in the sink and headed off to the bedroom. The television in there worked just as well.

***

The world slows down. He watches his brother run and run, his legs pumping, a look of total determination on his face. This is wrong, he knows. This is all going to go wrong.

His brother reaches the end of the loft and leaps into the air. For an amazing moment, he appears to be floating, legs up, arms up, reaching. He grasps at the frayed rope over his head, the momentum of his body carrying him forward.

He looks up and sees just how frayed the rope is. It’s barely secured to the beam. Why didn’t he notice earlier? Why didn’t his brother?

He opens his mouth to scream, but he can tell it’s already too late. Slow motion, but happening too fast.

***

Needham lived in what was essentially a half-way house. It was an apartment complex located in a shitty part of town specifically meant for people being treated with mental illness to reintegrate into society. Each apartment housed two people, while medical staff also lived and worked close by. The staff gave medications at all hours, video surveillance monitored the apartments, and each resident wore digital trackers.

Of course, those only worked so well since Needham’s tracker had gone missing and was not attached to him when he killed Lori Bolling.

“We’re still looking into how this happened, detective.” The man talking was a lot like the man the detectives had spoken to at GenTech. He had similar glasses and a bald head. He wrung his hands nervously. “The trackers aren’t supposed to be removable.”

“Did he have visitors in the past few weeks?” Jessica looked ahead, studying the door frames of each apartment they passed. “Did he leave the property for any reason?”

The little man wrung his hands. “Well, they’re not supposed to have visitors and you can see we monitor everything. As I said, we’ve launched an internal investigation into this entire incident. We don’t know how it happened. It’s just horrible.”

“Yes, it is.” Daniel didn’t want to listen to this turd talk anymore. He just wanted to discuss things with the roommate and get out of here. “Is his roommate...sane?”

The man sputtered. Did a kind of spit take. “Well, all of our residents are undergoing treatment of some kind. Mr. Dorning has bi-polar disorder and some dissociative problems. He is under medication and has been taking his pills.”

“So, he’s crazy, but who knows if he’ll be able to understand what’s happening?” Jessica had a way of cutting through the bullshit.

They finally stopped in front of a red door. The little man removed a key card and flashed it in front of black plate. The door beeped and opened inward. Daniel and Jessica stepped inside a neat apartment, where the walls, furniture and carpet were almost blinding in their whiteness.

“Mr. Dorning, these are the detectives I told you about.” The little man nodded toward another man with messy blond hair and bright blue eyes sitting on the sofa. “Do you remember?”

“Of course I remember you asshole. I’m crazy, not senile.”

Dorning cast a glance at Daniel, rolling his eyes. Can you believe this guy? Daniel stifled a laugh.

“Thank you for showing us here,” Jessica intervened, putting a hand on the little man’s arm. “Can we have time alone with Mr. Dorning? It will probably be better that way.”

The little man looked even more nervous. He was told to stay with them, Daniel guessed.

“You can watch via the cameras if it makes you feel better.” Daniel showed the man his pistol. “We’re also armed.”

Showing off the gun seemed to upset the man, who mumbled half-hearted warnings, then backed out of the apartment. He slammed his fingers in the door as he closed it, let out a yelp, and shut the door.

“Good job showing that twerp the gun,” Dorning said. “The man’s afraid of his own shadow.”

“Thanks for talking to us,” Daniel said, taking a seat in a leather chair without being asked to do so.

Dorning gave a slight nod. “I was wondering if anyone would come back and talk to me. When you guys came around here the first time, that asshole wouldn’t leave. I didn’t feel comfortable talking with him around.”

“Why is that?” Jessica adjusted the crease in her slacks.

“He only cares about making this entire place seem like a success. Goddamn doctors. They think they know better all the time. Look at all the video surveillance and other bullshit, and Bo still got out. He was gone all the time over the last few months. I knew it was bad news. I knew he shouldn’t be getting in that car, but did anyone want to listen to me? No, of course not. I’m the crazy one, right?”

Dan and Jessica exchanged a quick look.

“What car?” Daniel prodded.

Dorning reached into his pocket. For a moment Daniel was worried, but then he pulled out his cell phone. He took a moment to call up a photo, then turned the screen to face the detectives.

“This car.” He looked very satisfied with himself. “For weeks before he went off and apparently killed that woman, he was meeting up with someone in this big fancy car. He’d be gone all night, then come home in the morning all exhausted and with bruises or burns around his head.”

Daniel leaned forward. It was some kind of big four-door car. Perhaps a Cadillac?

“Can you send that to me?” He asked and gave his email address. A moment later, Daniel’s phone dinged. “Thank you.”

“Was Bo taking his medication?” Jessica kept her head down on her notepad.

“Not the last few weeks. He told me he was undergoing some kind of new treatment. Something with a thing on his head and memories. Said he didn’t need to take the medication anymore. He got crazier and crazier. Started to even scare me.”

“Did he talk about Lori Bolling?” Daniel asked while also studying the image on his phone some more. The image was too small, but something about the man behind the wheel was familiar.

“All the time. He started talking about how they had gone out in school. The way he told it, they were hot and heavy. Really in love. Then she broke his heart, and he said things turned to shit in his life shortly after.”

“Was he violent?”

Dorning shook his head. “Not for most of the time I knew him. He could get manic and a little out there, but he never talked about being violent. The moment he became obsessed with this Lori girl, he suddenly got very violent. You can look at the wall near the bedrooms there. He punched a hole in it.”

“Did you try to report this to the people running this place?” Jessica flicked her eyes toward the bedroom hallway.

“Of course, but they didn’t believe me. They said the video surveillance would show he was leaving the apartment, but nothing did. I don’t know if they even checked. They dismissed me.”

Daniel gestured toward Jessica. Just a waggle of his fingers. Time to move this along.

“Thanks for talking to us, Mr. Dorning.” Jessica produced a business card and handed it over to the man. “This is my number. If you think of anything else, you’d like to tell us, this is the place to reach me.”

They left fast. As they walked back toward the entrance, Daniel studied the walls and ceilings of the complex. There were dark glass bubbles installed there indicating cameras. From what Daniel could tell, they covered every square inch of the place. They would need to view this, plus, they’d need surveillance from every other business with a camera near here.

“We’re gonna need to get all of this.” Daniel waved at the cameras. Jessica muttered her affirmation. “I think I see something in this photo, too. I better call Larry. He’s going to have to do some work here to clean up this image.”

***

Larry Wilkins liked his room dark. He played up the whole idea of being the weird tech guy to the hilt. He closed his windows, kept the lights dim and his hair greasy. The moment Daniel entered the room, however, his face brightened, and he smiled.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite detective,” he said. “Whatcha got for me?”

Daniel showed him the image on his phone. “Can you enhance this at all? If I can make out the driver, or something specific about the car, it would help.”

“Not sure I can do much with a shitty image like that, but I’ll try. Just send it over.”

“I need it fast.”

Larry sighed. “You always do.”

***

Daniel and Jessica were back in their conference room when one of the deputies stopped by to tell them the footage from the video surveillance cams at the halfway house, plus all the buildings in the area with their own cameras. They had asked for footage in a ten-block radius for a start.

“Thanks, Norm,” Daniel said. “Send it over to us.”

Moments later, the files were loaded to the network and moments after that, the detectives were studying hours and hours of footage.

It was going to be a long night.

***

It was two in the morning and Jessica had fallen asleep in the chair next to him. Daniel’s eyes felt like they were turning to dust in his skull. His email gave him a notification he had a new email. Larry was working late, too, apparently.

Daniel opened the email and then the photo. His eyes widened. His hand snatched out and slapped Jessica on the shoulder. She moaned, her head rolling around on her neck. He slapped again.

“What? Stop hitting me. Jesus. What?”

Daniel shoved the phone into her face. Jessica wiped her eyes, and it took a moment for her vision to focus.

“Is that -?”

“Yeah. Let’s get back to the other footage. If we can see him better in one of those, we can really nail him.”

***

His brother keeps swinging out, it feels like he will never stop swinging into the wide open air. When the rope snaps over his head, he can barely hear it over the roaring of his own blood in his ears. He opens his mouth to scream, but it’s already too late.

He sees his brother sail into the open air, much further than intended, sending him past the pile of hay. His brother’s legs and arms flail in the air, a look of pure terror on his face. He sees his brother’s eyes, clear as day, lock onto his own. His brother knows this will be bad, but neither knows just how bad.

Time freezes for a moment, then his brother falls down below the level of the loft. He hears the sound of him hitting the ground. It’s the most horrifying thing he ever hears. Ever sees.

***

They found the video they wanted hours later. The image of the car and driver is as clear as day thanks to a video surveillance from a high-rise apartment building three blocks from the halfway house. It’s almost as if he was posed for it.

“Do you think we should get back up?” Jessica asked as they drove out of the station parking lot.

“With this guy? No. He’ll crumble the moment we flash our badges. Probably confess everything.”

Jessica studied Daniel’s face as they speed along the roads. “You don’t think he’s really the one who did this.”

“Oh, he did it. He set the wheels in motion with Needham, or arranged for it, but I’d bet five years of my salary Lorde was the one who pushed him into doing it.”

“So, you’re already thinking about cutting a deal with this fucker?”

Daniel shrugged. “Don’t you think he’ll crack pretty fast once we start laying out the evidence?”

“I hope so.”

They arrived ten minutes later, silently, having left the lights and sirens off. Daniel showed his badge to the man at the front desk and they’re allowed to head up to the twentieth floor. The hallway is cool and quiet, lined on either side by apartments. All of them, at this height, have spectacular views of the city. The one they want is at the far end of the hall.

“Eric Newmann,” Daniel announced to the door, then knocked. “Newmann, it’s the police, open up.”

There’s no response, but they can hear noises from within. A television? Jessica raised an eyebrow.

“Newmann, come on, open up.” She got her gun ready, as did Daniel, and held up a key from the front desk to let them into the apartment.

Nothing. Just more sounds from inside, which might have been a television.

“Guess we go in.” Daniel inserted the key card into the slot. The light turned green and the two detectives stepped inside, guns drawn and ready.

“Gah.” Jessica held a hand up to her nose.

Daniel smelled it a second later. The coppery smell hit him first, then the other smells. Piss. Shit.

“Goddammit,” Daniel muttered and ran into the living room.

“Jesus, Danny, stop!”

Daniel burst into the living room. A wide, white, luxurious sofa extended almost the entire length of the room. One entire wall was floor-to-ceiling windows, and the city twinkled beyond. Distantly, the blinking light of an airplane crawled across the sky.

Daniel took all of this in along with the gorefest on the couch. There wasn’t much left of Eric Newmann’s head. Most of it was splattered across the back of the sofa, the dining room table just behind it and all over the floor. Much of it was a dark red, almost black. He had done this a while ago.

As Daniel went one way around the couch, Jessica went the other way. The huge double-barreled shotgun was still in his lap, but leaned precipitously to one side. They could still smell the powder in the air.

“He’s wearing Redux.” Jessica still held one hand up to her mouth and nose, her gun pointed at the carpet.

“Was he doing a session when he blew his fucking head off?” Daniel asked.

The headset was still there, although the blast had destroyed the attached goggles. The metal headband was slightly askew, looking like a half-assed halo.

Daniel turned to see what the man had been staring at before he killed himself. It was a flat-screen television set against the windows. How anyone would stare at the screen instead of the view was beyond Daniel, but there it was.

“This isn’t on a station,” he indicated the television.

He looked at the screen, which appeared to show the interior of the room they stood in right now. Then he studied the body. The position of the hands, the headset. There was a control console on the table in front of Newmann.

“This is a new version of Redux.” Jessica studied the console. It was very elaborate and nothing like the version either of them had seen before. “This must be the new set so you can do it at home and not need a tech.”

“He wasn’t going through a full session.” Daniel turned his gaze back to the television screen. “He downloaded something. He downloaded whatever he was doing before he...”

“Christ.” Jessica touched the console screen. The scene changed on the television. “He recorded a goddamn message by downloading it here. For fuck’s sake. Downloadable suicide notes.”

After a moment she was able to get the screen to start playing the message.

“Hello. My name is Eric Newmann. I’ve been the public relations director for GenTech for almost seven years now. I’m recording this because I want this to be my confession.”

The memory was from his perspective, but he had put a mirror on the table to talk into. Daniel found it on the floor in front of the coffee table. He must have kicked the table when he blew off his head. His eyes on the video looked dazed, wide, unemotional.

“I knew that our employee, Lorilee Bolling, had been having an affair with our CEO, Del Lorde. I had always been in love with Lori. For years. I tried to just keep it to myself, but my jealousy grew out of control.”

He licked his lips, shifted on the sofa. The barrel of the shotgun drifted into view, touching his leg. His eyes flicked to the side, as if noticing the gun there for the first time.

“Everyone at GenTech gets to have a Redux session. One of the perks. I knew Lori had, and I accessed her memories. I was able to figure out there was a boy, back in her junior high days, who had a huge crush on her. I then used knock-off Redux versions on this man. A mentally unstable man. I got him to stop taking his medication and made him believe he and Lori had had a relationship back then. It was all lies. I manipulated him illegally, using faulty equipment to turn Bo Needham into a weapon.”

He wiped at his eyes.

“I’ve been living with that for a while now. I’ve been led to understand, there are police on their way here tonight to arrest me. I can’t be arrested. I can’t be in prison. I also can’t live with the guilt. This is my only way out.”

He sighed, picked up the shotgun.

“I want to stress this was all me. I was the only one involved. No one else at GenTech had anything to do with this. I’m so sorry for the pain I caused.”

Newmann turned his head away from the mirror and the image filled with the view of the double-barreled shotgun pointing at his face. With a half second of explosive sound, the image cut out.

“Goddammit,” Daniel whispered. “Goddammit.”

***

Daniel and Jessica sat in the chief’s office four hours later. Both of them were tired and both had headaches. They had just spent the last four hours at the apartment while the forensic teams did their thing. Everything pointed to a suicide. Already the recording had been analyzed and determined to be legit. There were other detectives combing through Newmann’s house and his office. So far, all the details pointed to him doing exactly what he said he had done in his suicide recording.

“I think you guys need to finish your reports and close this out,” the Chief said with a sigh. “Detective Hernan, I can see the look on your face. You want to keep going at this until you get something on Lorde. Stop it.”

“I have something on him!” Daniel slapped his hand on his knee, his eyes red, face pale. He was so tired, but he burned with anger. “We have recordings showing all the stuff the company has been doing. Some of it, most of it, has to be illegal.”

“Do you have any idea how powerful Lorde is? Think about it, detective. If he has all the richest and most powerful people in the world’s memories saved away in hard drives, you don’t think he can find a way to get out of this? He’s on at least four Presidential advisory committees. He probably texts the actual President every goddamn day. You think he won’t wiggle out of this before the day is over?”

Daniel sighed and rubbed his eyes. “So, he’s just going to get away with this?”

“We have someone for the crime. As far as the rest of the world goes, Newmann is the murderer. Bolling’s family can rest at ease. This is a closed case. Period.”

Daniel looked at Jessica. She appeared half asleep, but shrugged at him. “He has a point, Dan. We can sit here and argue about this all night, or just fill in our reports, close it out and move on.” She waved a hand. “I want to go home. Maybe sleep for four days.”

The chief nodded vigorously. “Yeah, take the rest of the week off. There’ll be plenty of fresh cases ready for you when you get back. Focus on helping other people, this is a done deal.”

Daniel shook his head, but he knew there was nothing else to be done. He stood up and walked to the door. Vaguely, he heard Jessica follow him. He reached for the doorknob.

“Detective.”

Daniel closed his eyes. He was so done with this. “Yes?”

“I’d get rid of all that stuff you got from Bolling. It would be ill advised to send anything to, say, the press.”

“Right.”

Finally, he was out the door and walking to his desk. Daniel moved fast, irritated to the point of wanting to punch walls. He heard Jessica moving just as quickly behind him, her heels clicking on the tile.

“Daniel. Daniel. Daniel!”

“WHAT?”

Daniel reached his desk, grabbed his coat. He turned to face Jessica. “What?”

“What are you going to do? I can see it in your eyes, too. You’re going to do something.”

“I’m going to go home. I will drink a beer or six and then pass out in bed. Tomorrow, I will try to decide if being a cop is really what I want to keep doing with the rest of my fucking life.”

“We do the best we can.” Jessica put one hand on his. “We do what we can and we close out the cases the best we can. Guys like Lorde are too big.”

“The stuff on that disc should destroy him.”

“We haven’t even analyzed all of it. We were busy looking for a murderer. For all we know, none of the stuff she found can actually be tied to Lorde. He always has a way to cushion himself from this kind of shit. If you take down his company, you just out hundreds, maybe thousands, of people out of work.”

Daniel studied her eyes. He knew her well enough to know this was eating at her, too, but she was also more cynical than he was. She was tired and not a crusader.

“I understand.” He put his own hand over her’s. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you next week.”

She smiled, seemingly reassured. Daniel hoped he sounded convincing.

***

His brother hit the floor hard. He heard the crack. There was no sound after. It took a long time for him to come forward and peer over the edge of the loft. His brother was in the far corner, near where the wall and floor met. His body did not look right.

It took another few minutes before he finally ran for his parents.

***

He came in through the door and Daniel watched him as he put his coat on a hook, took off his shoes. The man sighed. Must be tiring, he thought, dealing with Newmann and his suicide. Embarrassing, but it could be dealt with.

Del Lorde turned on the lights with a word, checking his mail and not looking up.

“Good evening, Mr. Lorde,” Daniel said.

Lorde jumped, the letters falling from his hands. “Who-? What-? Hey, are you-? Why are you here? Get out!”

Daniel held up a small device. It was a gift he got from his tech friend at work. He clicked a button. The door made a loud sound as the lock latched.

“There, now you’ll stay here and it disables the cameras all over this place, so we can chat in private. Hello, Mr. Lorde, I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why are you here? I can have you fired, you know. This is harassment. This is illegal!”

“Shut the fuck up.” Daniel stood up and walked over to Lorde. He reached into his coat pocket and was gratified to see Lorde flinch. He pulled the small memory card out. “This is the memory card Lori Bolling swallowed the night she came home, and you sent Needham to kill her.”

“I had nothing to do -“

“I thought I told you to shut-up. I meant it.”

The two men stared hard at each other. Lorde blinked first.

“Sit down, Mr. Lorde.”

Lorde ground his teeth, his jaw working like it was on a piston. However, he dropped his mail on a nearby table and strode into the living room. He sat down in one of the comfy chairs, crossed his legs.

“You can’t do anything to me, detective. Even I know that much about the law. You being here violates the law in a much greater way than anything I’ve done.”

Daniel set the tiny SIM card on the table near where Lorde had placed his mail. He walked into the living room, too, taking a spot across from the man.

“I know, but I’m not here as a cop. You made things pretty neat. The case against you and Lori Bolling will end with Eric Newmann. Marvellous job.”

Lorde smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I feel bad for her family and the very disturbed man I hired.”

Daniel held up a hand. “Save the fucking speeches for your board meetings and parties. You and I both know you’re the one who got Needham to kill her. You used the data you gathered from Lori when you did a Redux session with her. Remember? The one she talks about on that card where she loses a few days time? You’re the one who found Needham. How long did it take? You had to find someone who would go crazy for Lori, and you found a mentally disturbed person from her past. Luck, I guess.”

Lorde opened his mouth, probably to protest, but Daniel held up his hand again. The look on his face caused Lorde to snap his jaw shut.

“You had to put someone between you and the crime, so you used whatever you had on Newmann to get him to do it. I don’t know what that was and probably never will, but he was already loyal. I’m sure you didn’t need to push him too hard. He brought Needham to his illegal Redux sessions, which is how you weaponized him.”

Daniel sighed.

“It took time, though, and that entire time Lori was gathering information. Maybe you were too distracted by orchestrating Needham and Newmann. Maybe running a company takes more work than I realize since it seems to me you just sit on your fat ass while everyone else works themselves to death to make you richer.”

Daniel smiled, almost daring Lorde to speak. Instead, the CEO straightened his tie and cleared his throat.

“You have no idea how much she has on there, do you? She has proof of Redux Psychosis. Video of the insanity wards where people babble or stare at the wall. Pages and pages of memos from you to people all over the world. The experiments involving turning people into assassins, implanting suggestions, erasing memories. There’re the details about how you’re the one putting defective Redux devices on the street. The knock-offs? Most of them are from GenTech. You make the money and gather more data. You’ve gathered data and memories from world leaders, mafia men, criminals of all kinds, all over the world. You say the data is deleted, but Lori Bolling has proof here that this isn’t so, is it?”

Lorde became more and more pale as Daniel talked. He licked his lips. “I-I don’t know...”

“Don’t talk. I have all of it. Hell, there are pages I haven’t even looked at yet. I bet you have buffers for a lot of this, too. You have people in prominent places you can blackmail and lawyers enough you could circle this block three or four times, right?”

Lorde said nothing, but the hate in his eyes was clear.

Daniel stood up, walked over to where the SIM card lay. “My chief says nothing can be done with this. He wants me to destroy it. Instead, I’ve made copies. Lots and lots of copies. I tell you this because my health is suddenly very much your concern. I get a severe cold that turns into pneumonia and I die, the data goes out. All over the world.”

He turned back around, a smile on his face. “But here’s the thing, you don’t deserve to sit here in your fancy penthouse and run a billion dollar company. Not after what you did and what you’ve done. So, you have a deadline, Lorde. You have two weeks to resign as CEO. I know, I know, you’ll work out a sweetheart deal to step down so you’ll still be richer than shit, but it’s something.”

Lorde laughed. “What are you going to do, detective? I own much of the press in this world, you know. I am on the board of the biggest publications and newspapers on the planet. I can influence the rest. The best you can do is end up getting this story on conspiracy blogs.”

Daniel laughed along with him, but so loud it shut Lorde up. “You’re funny. You’re also right. However, there are still a few journalists out there who might at least probe a little. Plus, you’re international. There have to be law enforcement agencies around the world who would love to start investigations, and I might even be able to find a senator who might want to start something. Imagine testifying in front of congress, huh?”

Daniel rubbed his hands together. He laughed again.

“Plus, as I said, you have memories from mobsters, gangsters and dictators. Imagine what might happen if the mob or North Korea or few other despots were to even hear a rumor you might have dirt on them. What might they do just to be safe? Those guys don’t worry about warrants and laws, do they?”

Lorde’s face fell.

“So, turn in your resignation. Use any excuse you want. Tell them you want to spend more time with family, or want to start a family. Tell them anything. Just resign.”

Lorde clenched and unclenched his fists. “I will hunt you down.”

“If anything happens to me, hundreds of copies of Lori Bolling’s files go out to all kinds of people. Some of them via good old-fashioned snail mail. You can’t hack and erase those.”

Lorde snarled. “Fuck you.”

“Here, you can keep this,” Daniel said, indicating the SIM card. “I have just so many copies of everything on here. So many.”

Daniel extended both hands out to his side. “I trust you’ll do the right thing, Lorde. If not, well, then I guess I will. I’ll make it my life’s work to take down GenTech and ruin your life.”

He tilted an imaginary hat brim toward the CEO, then turned toward the front door. He knew Lorde was back there trying to shoot daggers through his back via his eyes, but he didn’t turn around. He was in the elevator moments later.

***

“What did you do, Daniel?” Jessica asked over the phone.

“Keep your eye on the news,” Daniel replied, “I think you’ll find our Mr. Lorde suddenly has other things to do besides run GenTech.”

“Is that really justice for Lori?”

“I don’t know. Probably not, but it’s something. Goddammit, it’s something.”

***

Daniel sat at his desk back in his tiny apartment. He had been in two enormous apartments high in the sky, and his little place seemed so pathetic by comparison. Spread out on his desk was the Redux set Lorde had sent him. His glass of whiskey sat near his right hand.

He wiped at his eyes, then studied the photo he had kept with him for over thirty years. It was taken when he was only five-years-old. Back in the days when he and his brother were attached at the hip. He worshiped his older brother and thought he ruled the world. Then came the day in the barn. The day his brother wanted to jump into the pile of hay using a frayed rope.

His parents never got over his brother’s death. Daniel supposed he never did either.

He studied the Redux helmet and the small console. It seemed pretty easy to use. The directions were simple. He just needed to think about the memory and plug the thing in. The computer did the rest, somehow reading his brainwaves and translating the memory to something he could relive in 3D. Doing that wouldn’t be hard since not a day had gone by in thirty years where he hadn’t thought about his brother’s death.

Should he really do it? It would be nice to know what might have happened if he had done something else. If he had stopped his brother somehow, maybe things would be different.

Did he dare download his memories into Lorde’s system? Did it matter? And what about the addiction? Would being able to experience something different from what had happened send him into a spiral of never wanting to take the helmet off?

Again...did it matter?

“I miss you,” he told the photograph. “Every day.”

Daniel downed the last bit of whiskey in his glass.

“What the hell,” he said.

Daniel grabbed the helmet and put it on his head.

“Let’s see what happens.”

He turned on the machine.

THE END

Other Books by Bryan W. Alaspa